I am a Burmese exile taking a near-permanent refuge in New York and Sydney. Here are my essays about Burma and anything else I feel like writing about. And posting the articles I like from selected sites. Bridging Burma to the world this Blog is more of a Politically-Oriented Literary Blog than a Plain News Blog or a Sophisticated Thoughts Blog.

Tuesday, January 7, 2014

Bangladeshi Islamist War-Criminals in New York City

Bangladeshi war-criminal Ashrafuzzaman
Khan now hiding in New York City.

About 30 Bangladeshis protested on
December 22 outside the headquarters of the Islamic Circle of North America in
New York. The demonstrators are demanding the deportation of a former senior
ICNA official that has been indicted in Bangladesh for war crimes.

The protest was organized by the New
York chapter of Ekatturer Ghatak Dalai Nirmul Committee. It was founded in 1992
by the late Jananara Imam, a progressive female Muslim seeking justice for
atrocities committed during the Bangladesh Liberation War with Pakistan.

ICNA, meanwhile, is mobilizing to convince the U.S. government to demand
that Bangladesh stop prosecuting leaders of the Islamist Jamaat-e-Islami group
for war crimes. Uncoincidentally, ICNA is a derivative of Jamaat-e-Islami.

ICNA the US Islamist Group is hiding Bangladeshi war-criminals

ICNA is telling its membership to call
the White House and State Department to protest the Bangladeshi government’s
execution of Abdul Quader Mollah, a leader of the Jamaat-e-Islami group, for
committing war crimes during Bangladesh’s war for independence from Pakistan.

Hanged war-criminal Abdul Quader Mollah.

Molla
earned the nickname, “The Butcher of Mirpur,” during Bangladesh’s war for
independence from Pakistan in 1971. He and Jamaat-e-Islami sided with Pakistan
in the conflict that ended the lives of some three million people.

Mollah belonged to the Al-Badar paramilitary force, a creation of
Jamaat-e-Islami’s student wing. In February, Bangladesh’s International Crimes
Tribunal ruled that he was guilty on five of six charges of war crimes. It
concluded that he murdered at least 344 civilians. He was involved in the
beheading of a poet, he massacred her family and raped an 11-year old girl.

One of the eyewitnesses who testified
during the trial was Syed Shahidul Haque Mama, who fought in favor of
Bangladeshi independence. He said that Molla was the “key person” overseeing
the torturing and execution of civilians.

He saw him in a crowd cheering as homes
were set on fire and implicated Molla in various murders, including one where a
political opponent’s fingers were cut off before he was tied to a tree and then
killed. Mama said he found mass graves and a bag full of severed eyes in the
areas Molla operated.

Bangladeshi women celebrating the hanging of Mollah.

Mollah denies responsibility for these
crimes, but no one contests the fact that he was/is a senior Jamaat-e-Islami
leader and supported Pakistan. As Tahmima Anam writes, the evidence of
Pakistani war crimes is irrefutable.

“Pakistani documents detailing
operations and massacres, hit-lists of local collaborators, journalists’
reports, photographs and video footage, and, most importantly, the eyewitness
accounts of the survivors” are proof, she says.

The website of Jamaat-e-Islami proudly
hosts an article about ICNA’s support. ICNA President Naeem Baig said the
execution of the Jamaat-e-Islami leader “is a political murder and a dark day
for justice.” He would have you believe that its concern is solely based on a
desire to see fair trials, but unfair trials happen all over the world. Why
would ICNA invest its energy into this specific cause?

Ashrafuzzaman Khan: Bangladeshi War-criminal and Islamist in US

His group’s call-to-action failed to
mention an inconvenient fact: One of its former leaders, Ashrafuzzaman Khan, is
among those Jamaat-e-Islami leaders that are being tried for war crimes.

Khan was charged by the Bangladeshi tribunal in October 2012 for being
the “chief executioner” in at least 18 murders in 1971. His targets were
intellectuals in favor of Bangladesh’s independence bid. Three eyewitnesses
recall seeing him at murder scenes.

Islamist War-criminal Ashrafuzza Khan.

When Khan was asked about the tribunal,
he told a reporter, “I don’t know what is happening in Bangladesh. I am not a
citizen of Bangladesh” and ended the interview.

A group of 30 Bangladeshis protested
ICNA on December 22 and specifically demanded the deportation of Khan. One of
the organizers, Saleem Noor, told the Clarion Project that Bangladesh does not
have an extradition treaty with the U.S.

“The Bangladeshi community felt
obligated to stage that protest in front of ICNA to bring attention to the ears
and eyes of the U.S. government so it takes the proper action to send Khan back
to Bangladesh,” he said.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid
(D-NV) reportedly told the Bangladeshi government that he’d try to get the
Obama Administration to expatriate him.

Noor explained that Khan has been in New York City since the early 1970s
and was “involved in establishing many Islamic religious organizations here in
North America that are preaching the fundamentalist ideology.”

In July, it was discovered that Khan
was still listed as a “Shura member” of ICNA-NY’s executive board. He was also
listed as the President of the North American Imams Federation and the director
of its New York regional office. His name has since been deleted by both
organizations.

Fugitive war-criminal Ashrafuzzaman Khan is
one of the founders of ICNA in US.

ICNA President Naeem Baig recently
confirmed that Khan continues to be an ICNA official. He said, “Mr. Khan was
elected by ICNA’s local members and he has their support.” The current
Bangladeshi government was elected in a landslide over the Islamists and is led
by a secular-leaning woman. Its crackdown on Jamaat-e-Islami is
widely-supported.

In February, there was a burst of
protests against the group after one of its leaders escaped the death penalty
and flashed the victory sign after his sentencing. Tarek Fatah, an
anti-Islamist Muslim in Canada, wrote that it was “the first time ever in the
Muslim world there has been a popular uprising against the fascism of Islamist
parties.”

A Bangladesh court also barred
Jamaat-e-Islami from participating in elections because of its aspirations to
replace the country’s secular state with one based on Sharia.

ICNA: Islamist Fundamentalist Group from New York City

Regardless of one’s opinion on the
credibility of the Bangladeshi prosecutions, it is revealing that ICNA would
flex its muscles to defend Jamaat-e-Islami. The reason is that ICNA has
affinity for the group and ideological and foundational links to it.

Global City NYC writes, “ICNA was started by expatriate members of South
Asian Islamic groups, such as Bangladesh’s Jamaat-E-Islami, in the early
1970s.”

Ashrafuzza Khan committed atrocities during the
War of Bangladeshi Independence.

An ICNA publication in 1996 is a
smoking gun. It said, “Using the organizational development methodology of
[Jamaat-e-Islami founder] Maulana Mawdudi and the Jamaat Al-Islami of Pakistan,
which lays special emphasis on spiritual development, ICNA has developed a
strong foundation.”

ICNA’s official handbook from 2010
references the teachings of Maulana Maududi, the founder of Jamaat-e-Islami, as
well as Hassan al-Banna and Yousef al-Qaradawi, the founder of the Muslim
Brotherhood and its current spiritual leader.

It also listed the stages Muslims are
to follow until ultimately achieving a “united Islamic state, governed by an
elected khalifah [caliphate] in accordance with the laws of shari’ah [Islamic
law].”

Earlier this year, Imam Zaid Shakir preached that sharia rule is better
than the U.S. Constitution at an ICNA conference. The group’s events
consistently feature Islamist radicals.

While ICNA’s own texts and actions
speak to its Jamaat-e-Islami links, ICNA President Naeem Baig insists his group
has “no relations-no links-to any organization or any country outside the
United States.”

ICNA is hiding so many Bangladeshi war-criminals
at its headquarters in Jamaica, New York City.

And it isn’t only Jamaat-e-Islami that
ICNA is linked to. A 1991 U.S. Muslim Brotherhood strategy document lists ICNA
as one of “our organizations and the organizations of our friends.” It even
talks about discussions with ICNA about a merger. ICNA holds its annual
conferences with the Muslim American Society, a group that federal prosecutors
said was “founded as the overt arm of the Muslim Brotherhood in America.”

After the Muslim Brotherhood and
President Morsi were overthrown in Egypt, ICNA and MAS held protests demanded
the group’s restoration to power.

Luckily, a 2011 Gallup poll found that only 2% of Muslim-American males
and 0% of Muslim-American females choose ICNA as the organization that most
represents them, but that doesn’t prevent ICNA from putting together massive
events attended by tens of thousands of Muslims.

Its last conference was attended by
18,000 and another 14,000 watched online. ICNA may not be the most popular Muslim-American
group, but it is one of the most powerful. And it is now using its muscle to
make the U.S. pressure the Bangladeshi government.

A verdict against New York resident
Ashrafuzzaman Khan for alleged crimes against humanity during Bangladesh’s 1971
war of independence could come any day. Testimony before a war crimes tribunal
wrapped up in late September.

Poor people of Jamaica, NYC lining up at ICNA's massive
HQ building to receive handouts from ICNA.

Khan, a naturalized American and a
leader of the Islamic Circle of North America’s (ICNA) New York chapter, is
accused of being the “chief executor” of a killing squad loyal to the Pakistani
army. As Bangladesh moved toward independence, the squad allegedly rounded up
intellectuals – scholars, doctors and journalists – and then tortured and
killed them to deprive the new nation of leadership.

Niether he nor ICNA has commented
publicly since the charges were issued.

Last week, the ICNA New York chapter
quietly removed the names of executive board members, including Khan, from its
web page. Previous IPT stories on Khan linked to that page when it included
Khan’s name. A writer identified only as Shehab described asking ICNA back in
July whether the chapter’s board member was the same man facing the war crimes
tribunal.

If it is the same man, Shehab said he
wrote in his email to ICNA ,”does ICNA have any plan to initiate its own
investigation about the role of Ashrafuz Zaman Khan in Bangladesh during 1971
and the channel which associated him with ICNA hiding his past?”

He received no response until last
week. After the web page was scrubbed, Shehab says he received an email from
ICNA Secretary Hafiz Zafeer Ali. “He advised me to ‘focus on my study and do
not involve [in] back home politics’,” Shehab wrote.

Khan previously served as ICNA’s secretary
general. He and Chowdhury Mueen-Uddin, a prominent imam in the United Kingdom
who helped create the Muslim Council of Britain, were tried in absentia.

Islamist Circle of North America.

One eyewitness, a hostage who escaped
before he could be killed, testified that he saw Khan giving orders to the
death squad members. Other witnesses said they later recognized Khan as the man
who took their relatives away at gunpoint after his picture appeared in
Bangladeshi newspapers.

ICNA was founded by South Asian Muslims and its constitution draws
heavily from the Jamaat-e-Islami. The Jamaat was loyal to Pakistan during the
1971 war. The killing squad, known as Al Badar, was a Jamaat offshoot.

ICNA’s curriculum also emphasizes
writings by Jamaat founder Syed Abul Ala Maududi. He advocated that Muslims
“must strive to change the wrong basis of government, and seize all powers to
rule and make laws from those who do not fear God.”

As of Friday, Khan remained listed on
the contact page for the North American Imams Federation Northeast regional office.